Wo. What was that we were saying about misogynist comments and sexist epithets and stereotype threat and the way racist and homophobic comments are uncool but misogyny is edgy and funny?

Maybe there’s actually something in it?

Crude insults, aggressive threats and unstinting ridicule:  it’s business as usual  in the world of website news commentary – at least for the women who regularly contribute to the national debate.

The frequency of the violent online invective – or “trolling” – levelled at female commentators and columnists is now causing some of the best known names in journalism to hesitate before publishing their opinions. As a result, women writers across the political spectrum are joining to call for a stop to the

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Can I be mean? Can I laugh a cruel laugh at the Vatican’s shock-horror that Ireland closed its “embassy” to the Vatican on account of how it was useless?

Catholic Ireland‘s stunning decision to close its embassy to the Vatican is a huge blow to the Holy See’s prestige and may be followed by other countries which feel the missions are too expensive, diplomatic sources said on Friday.

Too expensive and too worthless, being as how the Vatican isn’t actually a real state and therefore “embassies” to it are kind of pointless. It’s been very kind and theocratic and respectful for countries to send ambassadors all this time, but all the same the Vatican really does need to learn … Read the rest

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… Read the rest

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So thinking about this athletic ability/strategic intelligence test I’ve been pondering what other tests would show.

A test for atheists and theists, for instance. A test in which the subjects would be told “this tests your generosity” – or warmth or empathy or compassion or altruism or kindness. I wonder if the theists would be primed to do better while the atheists would be primed to do worse.

That would be my guess, at least. I bet I have that stereotype. Do I also consciously believe it? Yes, maybe. I at least believe it’s possible.

I don’t think theists have a better metaethics than atheists; I think the reverse. But I think they might have a better motivation…depending on what … Read the rest

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Thanks to Stacy Kennedy on the Stereotype threat thread I’m reading Claude Steele’s Whistling Vivaldi.

He notes that we in the US live in an individualistic society.

We don’t like to think that conditions tied to our social identities have much say in our lives, especially if we don’t want them to.

We’re supposed to rise above such things. He subscribes to that idea himself. But –

But this book offers an important qualification to this creed: that by imposing on us certain conditions of life, our social identities can strongly affect things as important as our performance in the classroom and on standardized tests, our memory capacity, our athletic performance, the pressure we feel to prove ourselves…[p 4]

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Changing the date on this because of renewed relevance.

A re-post of one from a year ago when I was reading God and the New Atheism by John Haught.

October 18, 2010

John Haught says, in God and the New Atheism, that gnu atheists get faith all wrong, at least from the point of view of theology, which

thinks of faith as a state of self-surrender in which one’s whole being, and not just the intellect, is experienced as being carried away into a dimension of reality that is much deeper and more real than anything that can be grasped by science and reason. [p 13]

You know…there’s a problem here. I would like to say something sober and … Read the rest

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Maryam Namazie, in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo (which planned an edition with Mohammad as guest editor), features Mohammad as a guest blogger.

See some other articles she has written on free expression and the Islamic inquisition:
The Islamic Inquisition
Free expression no ifs and buts
Islam must be criticised
Offensive shomfensive
Apologise for what: On the Mohammad caricatures… Read the rest

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